eat something

About a year ago I visited Frontera Grill in Chicago with some ill intent. My earlier visit to Topolobampo was less than thrilling and I thought I had to at least try Frontera Grill before I declared Hugo Ortega the real king of modern Mexican cuisine in the US. In a mind of a committed narcissist, such declarations actually carry weight and I had to be sure.

For one reason or another, Topolobampo failed to capture my imagination. Coming from Houston, the Mexican flavors seemed far too timid and got lost in technique that was unnecessarily French. The meal was a disappointment to my Tex-Mex bred table mates as well. Add to that the Bayless mania in the media, the cookbooks, the grocery store salsas and you have yourself a better than average celebrity chef target that deserves to be taken down a notch or two.

I was wrong. From a trip that took me through a bewildering number of courses at Alinea, L2O, Graham Elliot and Moto, the dishes I remember most vividly came from Frontera Grill. After spending a night ingesting otherworldly foams, gels and aerated frozen solids, the mouth feel of a chili, tomatillo and lard laced tamale felt like food therapy.

Unlike what I found at Topolobampo, the relatively simple dishes at Frontera were bold, bright and complex.These were some of the best executed renditions of these Mexican dishes I’ve ever had, prepared with the higher quality ingredients and precision uncommon in other Mexican restaurants (unfortunately, this includes Hugo’s, which at the time took a walk on the dark side and had serious consistency problems). Flying back home all I could think about was that I really should have gone to Frontera for dinner, too. 

Watching Rick Bayless stun the judges on Top Chef Masters, I am not at all surprised they recognized him as an enormous talent and I no longer feel the need to question whether he is unfairly recognized by the media. Anyone who cooks Mexican food with as much confidence and skill as Rick Bayless deserves all the praise in the world.

I only wish he’d open a restaurant in Houston…

Those on the Houston Chowhounds mailing list have recently been following the dramedy that has become the Food Network  search for locations to film an episode of Diners, Dive-ins and Dives in Houston. I’m not a fan of the show and Guy Fieri doesn’t seem to be the type of guy I’d share a meal with, but I can appreciate a good train wreck when I see one.

The “creative process” apparently goes something like this: a hapless Food Network scout does a Google search for Houston food blogs, picks one at random and asks for a list of recommendations. The blog owner enlists a few other natives to toss around ideas and together they generate a list. Not every recommendation is a great fit for the show, but you could do far worse with Yelp, so it’s not a bad way to narrow your search in a city as large and unfriendly to outsiders as Houston. This is where the whole thing comes off the rails.

Houston may not be an undiscovered country, but we have our own cultural barriers here. Some of the restaurant owners barely speak English, while others simply told the producers to take a hike. Not all were entirely convinced that providing photos to the scouts was worth the effort,  narrowing the list further and further. In the end the Red Lion Pub (a dive with a publicist!) and Himalaya made the list. That is, until the Food Network inexplicably cancelled on Himalaya, leaving  the Red Lion and maybe a couple of other places who’s clientele is mostly white and English speaking (rumored to be Taco’s a Go Go and Kenny’s & Ziggy’s).

If you’re wondering what makes someone pick Red Lion over Himalaya, you’re not alone. I’ve been to Red Lion a couple of times on various work functions and even forced myself to eat a few things. The menu reads like a lively collection of British pub staples, but it tastes… semi-homemade.

The new face of Food Network
(src img: foodnetworkhumor)

Not sure I fault the owners. No one comes to Red Lion for the food -but they do come for the rowdy atmosphere. It’s the type of place where you wouldn’t be surprised to find a couple of “regular gals” like Sandra Lee and Rachel Ray pouncing on prey like a pair of drunken cougars. The grub is mediocre, but is what the new Food Network demographic expects these days.

There was a time when the channel had real chefs cooking real food and exploring interesting places around the world, but the Food Network has long ago ceded that sort of programming to the Travel Channel and Bravo. The new Food Network seems to target people who watch their television in giant blocks of morning shows, soaps, self improvement programs, feel good stories and “cooking”.

I can only assume that is the reason why the Food Network chose a faux-British pub, a faux-NY deli and a relatively good taco joint, but one where you’d rarely see an actual Hispanic person. These places generate business through their heavily stylized “character” as much as their food.

Houston Chowhounds dinner at Himalaya

In contrast, the only things at Himalaya with real character are the food and Kaiser, the charismatic chef/owner who somehow finds the time to run the front of the house and turn out the best Pakistani food in the city. The restaurant seems to have gotten a splash of paint and a few pictures on the walls recently, but it still maintains it’s clinical feel with it’s metal chairs and glass topped tables.

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Alison Cook posted a first look at Pico’s Bakery and Taqueria, which has become a regular destination for me since it opened a few weeks ago.

I am slowly working my way through the menu, but breakfast and Katz’s Coffee is still the best reason to visit Pico’s Bakery, at least in the morning. Along with the chilaquiles and eggs platters at Gorditas Aguas Calientes about a mile away on Bissonnet they make for one of the best Mexican breakfasts in town.

 
The tinga and chilorio meat was as expertly crafted as the cochinita pibil at Pico’s the restaurant, but lack of anything other than meat in the burrito and the generic tortilla didn’t hold my interest. I suspect I’ll get more mileage from the tortas and tacos.

What Pico’s Bakery does exceptionally well at night are the desserts. Like Alison Cook, I am not the biggest fan of Mexican pastries, but the cakes at Pico’s can be truly outstanding.

For some reason Houston has a dearth of independently owned bakeries. For a while, Rustika turned out some of the cakes in town, but seemed to have lost it’s way a few years ago. Turns out there is a reason for that.

 
According to Arnaldo Richards, who owns Pico’s, the woman who did most of the baking at Rustika left around that time.  After some time away from a commercial kitchen, she has partnered with the Pico’s crew to open a bakery. And that’s how Houston got one of it’s best cake masters back.

If you see the chocolate tres leches, grab a few slices. It’s unbelievably good.

I was irritated with Frank Bruni. How could someone with so much insight about food be so obviously pig headed?

Bruni’s enthusiasm for Bazaar may have matched my own when he named it one of the best new restaurants in the country, but I was stunned when Feast became his next pick. I am huge Feast fan, but Houston is not entirely visitor friendly and many restaurants deserving national attention are often overlooked as a result. It was great to see NY Times venture outside of their familiar stomping grounds. The only thing that really bugged me was that Bruni pandering to his base when he described Houston as the “land of big steaks and bold Tex-Mex”. Is the elitist attitude really necessary?

Every time someone makes such a sweeping generalization, I want to show them what the real Houston looks like in just one part of the city – the new Chinatown. Not the usual collection of pseudo-Chinese restaurants and gift shops that occupy a tidy span of 7 or 8 city blocks, but an entire city where real people live and eat. A place where pho, pupusas, boiled crawfish, dim sum and beignets very naturally occupy the same stretch of the road.

Vietnamese and cajun cultures collide at Boiling Crab

Frank Bruni, in particular, could also use a visit to Rainbow Lodge, so he can see the formation of the wholly new brand of Gulf Coast cuisine created without the benefit of fanfare that surrounds young NYC wunderkinds like David Chang. Great food is becoming as much the foundation of this city as oil and much of it is grounded in the diverse cultures of it’s residents.

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Restaurants live and die by the personal ambitions of their chefs more than they care to admit. Some aim to be the best in the city, content with the reward of perpetually packed dining rooms, while others push on to compete on a national stage. Komi aims to occupy this space and Johnny Mannis’ obsession with perfect execution and purity of ingredients earns his restaurant the right to be mentioned in the same conversation with such names as Manresa and Vetri. While Komi is clearly a work in progress, few restaurants in today can make such claim.

Since opening in 2004, Mannis has halved the number of seats to 38 and doubled the prices. The cost isn’t extreme, you can easily spend twice the amount at Citronelle, but few can afford to make dinner here a regular affair. None of the changes, not even an economic recession or a new administration in the White House, has made a dent in the restaurants’ popularity - Komi is still booked solid weeks in advance.

Komi hopes to provide an elevated experience and the uneasy showmanship is perhaps the singular weakness at Komi. The candle lit dining room set in an old brownstone looks theatric (direct throwback to Vetri), but hides the visual dimension of the food. The wait staff warn that photos of the food are not allowed, lest they spoil the surprise for future diners. I find this trend of self-aggrandizing chefs dictating what I do with my food highly annoying. After sampling the food at the photophobic and photoloving restaurants alike, I’ll go out on the limb and say that the creations they are trying hardest to protect are not all that unique. Meanwhile, the unreasonable rules imposed by the restaurant leave more than a slight bitter taste in your mouth.

I stopped my whining as soon as the first few plates of mezzethakia, Komi-speak for a progression of small tastes before the main courses, began to arrive. I couldn’t figure out  why the two nearly identical sashimi ribbons of aji and kampachi seemed so familar at first. Turns out Mannis spent some time working for Michael Kraemer at McCrady’s, who uses the same preparation to this day at Voice.

Even if the intended arc of the mezzethakia doesn’t always come together, the individual parts can be outstanding. The two small quenelles of hanger steak tartar and black truffle ice cream are a nod to French Laundry and other European inflected, but decidedly American restaurants, in terms of flavor, form and flawless execution. The salmon tartare required a little editing to eliminate the overwhelming sweetness of the candied pine nuts, but the rest of the dish, finished with sea urchin vinaigrette and frozen shiso leaf sorbet, brought a remarkable dimension to one of the most overused fish varieties today. Similarly impressive were the sashimi of diver scallops served in two preparations, one with black truffles and the other suspended in gelee and finished with sea urchin, seamlessly blending the best tastes of the earth and the sea. The fried Caesar salad taken in one bite may not have delivered much of the anticipated anchovy or Parmesan flavor, but the steamed brioche with Meyer lemon mousse and trout roe was as ethereal as it was stunning.

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